Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked

An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"

Comments

Vista was the fastest Windows

[symbolset]

From installation to wipe in an average of ten days. A pioneering achievement.

As for the rest of this prerelease hype, I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:Great goals

[Verminator]

As the most useful thing any user can do with Windows is to shut it down, this is a critical benchmark of performance.

So basically...

[korean.ian]

"'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.'"
So it's Snow Leopard?

Re:Great goals

[electrosoccertux]

Shutting down is part of the restart process, which I personally do several times a day just to make sure everything is running A-OK!!!

Re:The competition is OSX

[TheDugong]

They can pry my Ubuntu from my warm sweaty palms!

Re:Copying

[oever]

No, you still cannot copy it.

If Operating Systems Were Guns

[bmo]

Linux is anything from a little single shot Derringer to a 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling gun at 4200 rounds per minute.

OSX is clearly stamped down the side "Desert Eagle point five oh"

And Windows has "'Replica' written down the side"

--
BMO

Re:If Operating Systems Were Guns

[bmajik]

OSX is clearly stamped down the side "Desert Eagle point five oh"

That's certainly an apt comparison, since most people that have or want DE50's think they look cool and work really awesome, but have no fucking idea what they're doing when using a gun. They feel this strange sense of smugness about the elite status their choice in firearm has afforded them, perhaps not having any idea that a boring old Casull 454 has more muzzle energy, or that the DE50 is utterly impractical for essentially any worhtwhile endeavour. They know that they spent way more money than other guns cost, but they don't realize that there's always something cheaper that does a better job.

Yet nothing else seems to have caught and held the affection of hollywood so effectively, so nothing else will suffice for the discriminating individuals that know nothing about firearms or marksmanship --- except that they are better than everyone else at both by virtue of their wise purchase.

I'm not sure you had any idea how good of an analogy you were making. Bravo! :)

it doesn't matter if the OS is better...

[Tumbleweed]

I'm for _anything_ that gets more people to stop using IE6. :)

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:SMB still sucks

[bwalling]

I found all the Need For Speed games to be mostly the same and not very fun. The Mario games have a little more variety and have been getting more interesting.

The GUI is not the end-all, be-all

[Junta]

I take issue with a viewpoint that a GUI magically makes things easier. If you have thousands of paths with very advanced concepts, it will not be possible to extract the data with any degree of enhanced ease. In fact, navigation becomes clunky when there are too many options to parse at once or too many layers of depth to traverse. In that aspect, Windows really punishes advanced users or those seeking to give simple instruction. In linux support, I can generally paste a line or few of shell script. For Windows, I end up having to take several screenshots generally (the command was quicker to type as well, *and* more amenable to scripting and using against many machines at once). The 'cmd' scripting is painfully bad and severely lacking and awkward (many MS provided capabilities are possible via CLI, but not in as useful a manner, and many installers must run with a GUI, even if not interacted with). 'Powershell' is their 'answer' to the inadequcies of their cmd shell, but it's horribly slow and in many ways misses the point. An example central to that is how they deal with piping. They thought piping providing a dumb stream was not useful enough, so they made their piping require more work to describe simple concepts. Yes, dumb piping is limited to some types of programming, but for shell, the simplicity makes 95% of the usage cases easier, and you just have to go to a language like python for the other 5%.

For me, Windows not having a CLI for everything is worse than Linux distros not having a GUI for advanced features that you either had to search online for or already know ahead of time even under Windows. However, I believe at least SuSE endeavors to have a GUI for everything within YaST that is not frequently used by typical users.

Re:Great goals

[Bert64]

You lie...

Windows is an easy to use GUI based OS, therefore there is no possible operation that requires, or is easier done with, the CLI...

You must be thinking of Linux, where simple tasks like shutting down the system must be done from the command line.

Re:"the fastest version of Windows to shut down"

[blind biker]

DOS required to be shut down, too, if you used SmartDrive (which, IIRC, was active by default at least since MS DOS 5.0, as it improved performance quite a bit). What you had to do was to press CTRL + ALT + DEL before turning off the system, to let SmartDrive write back to disk the dirty blocks in its cache. It would display a short message during the operation, then reboot the computer. This behaviour was recommended in the DOS user's manual.

And only NOW you tell me!?